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Tuesday, April 22, 2014

S is for Sleeping Beauty

We all know the story of Sleeping Beauty. Beautiful princess, evil witch, spindle, sleep for one-hundred years, et cetera. And it's a great story. Especially those three little fairies who argue over dress colors and make really questionable cakes. But the truth is the original story . . . is a little bit different.

***Now remember yesterdays post, the one where I discussed the sexual undertones in Little Red Riding Hood and Rapunzel? Well, this post has some similar themes . . .

The original tale was written by Giambattista Basile in 1634, entitled Sun, Moon and Talia. In this version, Sleeping Beauty, aka. Talia, gets poisoned when she pricks her finger, and falls into a deep slumber. When a king stumbles upon her unconscious body, he "sleeps" with her, resulting in the birth of twin babies. She only awakens when one of the babies sucks on her finger, drawing out the poison from her body. She thus wakes up to find that she's been raped and is now the mother of two small children. She winds up married to the man who raped her and they live dysfunctionally ever after.

This post is part of the Blogging from A to Z Challenge. My theme (in case you didn't already guess) is Fairy Tales. Stay tuned for the rest of the alphabet, and if you'd like to check out the other participants, simply click here.

He isn't considered a villain though. His half ogre wife --who is understandably angry when her husband comes home with a mistress and two children --is. She tries to cook his kids. Thus the dysfunctionally ever after.

I remember the baby sucking out the splinter from Sleeping Beauty's finger, which she got from the spinning wheel, which would probably be less dangerous for the baby especially if it didn't share Sleeping Beauty's curse. I could be remembering wrong, though -- I did a study on Sleeping Beauty in college, but that was 12 years ago!

I always liked Sleeping Beauty and I can't wait to see this new film.. hmmm Rapedwhile asleep-maybe gave her that rape drug but the tales are rife with daddy's lusting after daughters and not believing them so off with their head-they are all a bit dysfunctional but you have to love them:)